WHO WAS SOREN KIERKEGAARD?

Quotes: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."  "Once you label me you negate me."  "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (May 5, 1813-November 11, 1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author who is widely consider to be the first existentialist philosopher, though he did not use the term existentialism. He proposed that each individual -not society or religion- is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely, or authentically.
Existentialism is a term applied to the work that despite profound doctrinal differences, shares the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject -the acting, feeling, and living. Freedom is the predominant value, and authenticity its primary virtue. The individual starting point is characterized by a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. The trend became popular in the years following World War II, and strongly influenced many disciplines besides philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology.
One of Kierkegaard's recurrent themes is the importance of subjectivity, which has to do with the way people relate themselves to (objective) truths. While objective facts are important, there is a second and more crucial element of truth, which involves how one relates oneself to those matters of fact. Since how one acts is more important than any matter of fact, truth is to be found in subjectivity rather than objectivity.
Kierkegaard recognizes and accepts the notion of alienation (feeling of separation from, discontent with, society; feeling of a moral breakdown in society; feeling of powerlessness in the face of the solidity of social institutions; impersonal, dehumanized nature of large-scale and bureaucratic social organizations), although he phrases it and understand it in his own distinctly original terms. For him, the present age is a reflective age -one that values objectivity and thought over action, lip-service to ideals rather than action, discussion over action, publicity and advertising over reality, and fantasy over the real world. The meaning of values has been removed from life by lack of finding any true and legitimate authority. Self-aware humans must confront an existential uncertainty. Humanity has lost meaning because the accepted criterion of reality and truth is ambiguous and subjective thought -that which cannot be proven with logic, historical research, or scientific analysis. Humans are not motivated and do not find meaning in life through pure objectivity. Instead, they find it through passion, desire, and moral commitment, something that come about through a direct relationship (rather than analysis) between one and the external world. This relationship is a way of looking at one's life that evades objective scrutiny. Individuals need to gain their souls from the world because it actually belongs to God. Kierkegaard concern is about the inner fight for faith.
He said, "Abraham had to leave his ancestral home and emigrate to an alien nation, where nothing reminded him of what he loved -indeed, sometimes it is no doubt a consolation that nothing calls to mind what one wishes to forget, but it is a bitter consolation for the person who is full of longing."
Kierkegard was discussing about the Christian who wants to be a Christian living in a world that has abandoned Christianity. A world where all individuals are forced to take an "image" of the positive part in Christian Democracy and in a non-Christian Democracy where none are allowed to take an active part in Christianity.
Kierkegard put it this way, "Getting the majority vote on one's side transforming one's God-relationship into a speculative enterprise on the basis of probability and partnership and fellow share-holders is the first step toward becoming objective." "The love which covers multitude of sins is never deceived. When the heart is filled with love, the eye has the power to foster the good in the unclean and is never deceived; for love when it gives, does not scrutinize the gift, and this eye does not see the evil but the pure and encourages the pureness of heart by loving it, this eye is fixed on the Lord. But when one gives with one eye and with seven eyes looks to see what one will get in return, then that heart is filled with envy, and the eye has power to call forth uncleanness even in the pure. Certainly there is a power in this world which by its words turns good into evil, and there is also a power above which turns the evil into good; that power is Love which covers a multitude of sins."
He continued, "Love does not seek its own, for there are no mine and yours in Love. The individual has the right to do so as he pleases with this contentious and yet legally entitled mine; and if he seeks his own in no other way than that which Justice allows, Justice has nothing with which to reproach him and has no right to upbraid him for anything. When Hate dwells in the heart, then sin lies at man's door, and its manifold desires exist in him; but when Love dwells in the heart, then sin flees away, and he sees it no more. Then, when disputes, malice, wrath, quarrels, dissensions, factions fill the heart, one then need to go far in order to discover the multitudinousness of sin. But when joy, long-suffering, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance dwell in the heart, a man, even if he were surrounded by a multitude of sins, remains an alien, a stranger, who understand only a very little about the customs of the country, even if these were explained to him. Justice is identified by its giving each his own, just as it also in turn claims its own. This means that justice pleads the cause of its own, divides and assigns, determines what each can lawfully call its own, judges and punishes if anyone refuses to make any distinction between mine and yours. As soon as someone is defrauded of his own, or as soon as someone defrauds another of his own, Justice intervenes, because it safeguards the common security in which everyone has his own. If the distinction between mine and yours is not achieve by its own, then confusion intrudes and a change is produced. Justice tries in vain to secure for each person his own; it cannot keep the balance and a revolution, war, earthquake, or so much terrible misfortune comes at stake. Yet does not Love in a certain sense, even in the most blissful way, produce the same confusion? But Love is the greatest of all, yet also the happiest. Love is a change, the most remarkable of all. Someone who is gripped by Love is changed or becomes changed. Love is the most blessed of all!"